I haven't read Mitt Romney's new book, but I already hate it. The title is what sets me off: No Apology. That phrase encapsulates a tragic impulse that weakens nations just as it devastates the human spirit. Americans are hardly its only victims. Because of the power the United States wields in the world, though, their collective egotism and self-deception is especially destabilising.

In his tub-thumping speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, Romney sounded like the hedge-fund tycoon he is. He railed against "big-government liberals" and called the US "the greatest nation in the history of the earth". His effort to present himself as the presidential candidate of the far right may be paying off. Groups of voters who consider President Obama a dangerous Marxist have pushed their way into the political arena, and some are focusing on Romney as their favorite for 2012. Although his Mormon beliefs may give pause to some, his ultra-nationalism, combined with his private fortune, blow-dried good looks and big-business resume, make him a plausible candidate.

Romney is a classic case of re-invention. As governor of Massachusetts, he supported government-sponsored healthcare, was sympathetic to gay rights and opposed harsh restrictions on abortion. After measuring the difference between the Massachusetts electorate and the national one to which he must now appeal, he has reversed those positions. Early polls show him among the Republican frontrunners.

Now, for the first time, Romney finds himself in need of a global vision. Presumably he lays it out in his book. I may get around to reading it, but for now I can't get past the title. It urges the United States to take the kind of defiant, kill-'em-all approach to the world that will antagonise its friends, strengthen its enemies, and undermine its own security.

Every nation, like every individual, would like to believe it owes "no apology" to anyone. Adults realise, however, that few among us are purely innocent or utterly blameless. The title Romney has given his book suggests that there are many bad countries in the world, and that they have done many bad things – but the US is not among them. It is a paragon of virtue, has brought the world nothing but good, and thus owes "no apology".

By this logic, Iran should apologise to the US for taking American diplomats hostage in 1979, but the US needs make "no apology" to Iran for overthrowing its elected government in 1953 and setting it off toward half a century of dictatorship. Afghans should apologise for giving al-Qaida a base to plan attacks against the US, but Americans owe "no apology" to Afghanistan for empowering Afghan warlords and training thousands of Islamic militants in the 1980s. Leftist leaders in Latin America should apologise for their anti-US positions, but the US owes "no apology" for its historic role in propping up cruel dictators from Cuba to Chile.

Germany has profusely apologised to Jews for Nazi crimes. Canada, Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native peoples. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France recently conceded that his country had made "profound errors" and shown "a kind of blindness" by supporting the genocidal force that slaughtered nearly a million Rwandans in 1994. These apologies are steps toward conciliation and stability, and should be encouraged. Who knows what might ensue if Turkey could bring itself to apologise to the Armenians, or Belgium to the Congolese, or Japan to the Koreans, or China to the Tibetans – or if Israelis and Palestinians could apologise to each other for years of violent outrages.

Rather than embrace Mitt Romney's aggressively ignorant view of the world, Americans should try to accommodate themselves to history. That means accepting the reality that every nation, like every human being, has sinned. Nations have the moral authority to point fingers at others only if they also reflect on how their own policies have contributed to the suffering, rage and violence that is shaking the world. "We abominate in others those faults which are most manifestly our own," Montaigne wrote five centuries ago. Then he quoted one of his favorite Latin proverbs: Stercus cuique suum bene olet. Everyone's shit smells good to himself.